Joanna Lucas

Children – Private

Jo regularly acts for parents in a wide range of private law disputes including:

• Child Arrangement Orders (residence and contact)
• Specific Issues such as schooling and names
• Prohibited Steps, including urgent and without notice applications
• Relocation both within and outside England and Wales
• Fact Finding hearings
• Extensive experience of complex cases involving allegations of sexual abuse of children, sexual abuse within parental relationships, serious domestic abuse including physical violence, coercive control and gaslighting
• During the Covid 19 lockdowns, Joanna advised and represented several clients in relation to disruption to their child arrangements

Jo’s appointment as a Deputy District Judge in 2024 brings judicial insight and enhanced expertise to her private law work. Her clients value the clarity and depth this perspective offers in navigating often complex proceedings.

She happily offers Early Neutral Evaluation in private law matters, often pre issue of proceedings, in the hope of assisting clients to avoid the cost and stress of lengthy court proceedings.

Jo also regularly acts in Family Law Act matters, where there are applications for non-molestation and occupation injunctions, so is very familiar with the cross over with Child Act proceedings.

Notable Cases:

• representing father in which mother had made numerous allegations of sexual abuse against him in respect of their six-year-old daughter. The allegations were all successfully refuted at a fact finding hearing, and following an assessment by a child and adolescent psychiatrist in respect of parental alienation, a lives with order was secured in respect of father;
• proceedings in the High Court, representing a father who had been convicted of murdering his wife’s lover, and sought contact;
• representing a mother who made numerous allegations of serious sexual assault and rape against the father, who appeared in person. All findings sought were made by the court at fact finding, and the father’s application for direct contact was dismissed;
• representing a mother who had been found to have inflicted fractures on the child, in earlier care proceedings. Successfully secured an order for shared care;
• M v F [2025] EWFC 114 (B) fact finding judgment in which Jo secured all findings sought of serious domestic abuse including non-consensual sex
• F v M [2025] EWFC 138 (B) costs judgment in the above case, where Jo successfully argued for the father to pay the vast majority of the mother’s legal costs post fact finding hearing

Domestic Abuse and Injunctions

Children – Public

Jo has extensive experience in all aspects of public law cases concerning children. She regularly appears at all levels in the Family Court and has conducted cases in the Court of Appeal. Her areas of experience include:

• EPO/ICO applications for Local Authority, Parents and Guardian
• Fact Finding Hearings – Domestic Abuse, Sexual Abuse of Children and Non-Accidental Injuries
• S.38(6) applications
• Placement
• Special Guardianship
• Adults with Learning Disabilities requiring the Official Solicitor
• Fabricated or Induced Illness
• Sexual Abuse
• Neglect
• DOL authorisation

Notable Cases:

• representing a father where there were numerous allegations of sexual abuse in respect of seven children;
• representing a mother who had been found in earlier proceedings to be the perpetrator of extensive sexual abuse;
• representing a father where there were extensive allegations of mother fabricating and inducing illness in the subject child. This case involved careful cross examination of a paediatrician, psychiatrist and psychologist and concluded with father securing a lives with order;
• representing the Local Authority where the care plan was to separate young siblings, and place one for adoption, leaving the other with the maternal grandmother, when both had been placed together with the grandmother for several months. Protracted evidence from two independent social workers;
• representing a young person in DOL proceedings where the local authority sought authorisation for chemical sedation;
• junior counsel in care proceedings representing the Local Authority in a fact finding concerning extensive inter familial sexual abuse

 Reported Cases:

• Re P and P [2009] 2 FLR 1370 Appeared as junior counsel for an Intervener in a successful appeal from the High Court, who had declined leave to instruct a paediatric pathologist to report on the circumstances of the death of a young baby.